I paused over that word and rolled it around several times in my head. I've decided that Fricke's simple summation is one of the best descriptors of Brian Wilson projects that I've ever read, and one of the reasons for Wilson's perennial popularity. The sun-dappled melodies, the luminous harmonies -- I'll never grow tired of letting them wash over me, and never realized before how they do heal a little bit of the brutality of life.

NEW CONTEST:We've got three sweet prizes to give to three readers:* One limited-edition 180 gram vinyl copy of the new record* One 7" vinyl single of "Midnight's Another Day"* One copy of the new album on CD, for the turntable-less

So if you want to enter, please leave me a comment specifying which of the three you'd want (vinyl, 45 single, or CD), and I'd love to hear about your favorite moment in a Beach Boys/Brian Wilson song. Contest will end Wednesday.

34 Comments:

My favourite part of any Beach Boys song, although Carl Wilson wrote it, has to be from "Feel Flows." It's where the jammy-sounding flute part stops and there only remains this really echo ladden guitar. Then out of nowhere comes this really trippy synthesizer before it goes back into the verse. I've never heard a song that sounded so much like being underwater.

Thanks for a great contest. I would like to enter the vinyl part of the contest. Still love the sound of vinyl.

Pet Sounds is still one of my favorite albums. It is and always will be in my road trip mp3 player. I had the opportunity to see the Beach Boys in the 80's. It was OK. Brian Wilson is on my list of people I want to see live. He was the Beach Boys and will always love the stuff he has written.

Looking forward to hearing this new record and with David Fricke using the word "healing" for his review makes me want to hear it even more.

Hi Heather. Love your site, thanks for all the delicious inside scoops. You'll probably hear this a lot, but my favorite Brian Wilson moment is from "Surf's Up," which is crafted with complete perfection in every chord change. The "moment" for me is the opening of the second part of the song, immediately following the line "Are you sleeping, Brother John." The music changes to a beautiful A-flat 6 chord, which comes out of nowhere but sounds perfect anyway, and Brian sings solo about dove nested towers. That's followed shortly thereafter by an A-flat chord with a D-flat bass note on the line "I heard the word" - the second greatest moment in a Brian Wilson song. I'd also like to mention the entire two minutes and fifty-six seconds of "The Warmth Of The Sun," but I don't think this contest allows for my "top two." I haven't heard the new Brian Wilson material yet, but I can't wait to dig in. (If I win, a CD would be terrific.)

Thanks for posting the stream of the new album. It's so classic Brian Wilson, and it's put me in a nastolgiac mood.

One of my all time favorite concerts was the Beach Boys at Regis College in 1975. They did a bunch from "Holland" which was big on FM in the day, but is ignored today. Brian wasn't with them then, and I don't even know if he contributed to Holland. But the double live album from that tour is still a frequent play on my turntable.

Also saw the BB with Fleetwood Mac at Mile High and with Chicago at CSU, when Elton's band came over from Caribou Ranch to join them. Hard to beat a sunny day with the BB.

I finally saw Brian for the first time in 1999 at Neil Young's Bridge Benefit. He hardly moved a muscle while he performed. Eddie Vedder, Roger Daltrey and Sheryl Crowe joined in for Help Me Rhonda.

Thanks Heather, CD is OKCharleschaslil@earth-net.net (but take out the hyphen)

My own favorite moment is the ending of "I'd Love Just Once to See You" on Wild Honey (1968). It is everything that a great Brian Wilson love song should be: vulnerable, intensely felt, gentle, sweet. The lyrics narrate about how the singer occupies himself while he waits to see his sweetheart again and how he'd "love just once to see" her. The final verse informs us that he'd "love just once to see her in the nude." It makes me smile every single time. It might just be the most charming Wilson song that I know.

My favourite Beach Boys moment is a simple one. I love the part in "Barbara Ann" where they all flub the line despite the reminder just before the verse. I'm sure it's staged, but I've loved it since I was a kid. My brother and I grew up on the Beach Boys and it was an absolute thrill to see them when I was about 10 years old.

When I was a kid I remember singing along with my baby sitter. I was soo in love with her. I must have been 10. She would come over and crank up the stereo. She brought her own 45's and played them all night. Beach Boys was who we first danced to.

I'd love a copy of the Vinyl. Thanks for the stream. This is going to be a nice Saturday.

My favorite Brian Wilson moment is (on the dvd, An All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson) when, after hearing an amazing array of people pay tribute to him, Brian himself sings "Love and Mercy." It is a nearly a religious experience and one that can bring me to tears.

And one that got rarer, I guess. When I looked up the correct title for the disc on Amazon, I found that it has apparently gone out of print and that used copies sell in $100 range. http://www.amazon.com/All-Star-Tribute-Brian-Wilson/dp/B00005QAPR

When I was a junior in high school, a good friend and I (along with our moms) took a Spring Break trip to LA. Because it was my first, and so far only, visit to California, I was so excited that I made a "California mix" CD for us to listen to. I think it consisted of approximately 75% Beach Boys songs, and we wore that thing OUT. I still can't listen to "California Girls" or "Kokomo" without closing my eyes and imagining us cruising down the LA highways (or more accurately, sitting in standstill traffic for hours), goofing around in the shops on Rodeo Drive pretending like we could afford it, or planning and scheming every night places to go to meet movie stars. There's nothing like soundtracking a trip to help keep the memories alive.

By far my favorite Beach Boys song (and one of my favorite all-time songs) is "God Only Knows." It may be cliche, but it's one of the most pure, naive, and beautiful love songs I've ever heard. The melody and harmonies still give me chills every time I hear it. Pet Sounds is a masterpiece, and "God Only Knows" is a tune I can listen to over and over again.

I have so many fave BBs & Brian Wilson moments, but one has to be that little connector between "H&V" and "Roll Plymouth Rock" on BW presents SMiLE. It's those little tiny bits that are such a huge part of Brian's genius, IMO.

I forgot to leave a Beach Boys moment. When I was a sophomore at Indiana University, I took many music classes, one of them being 'The History of Rock & Roll, '50s, '60s, & '70s.' When it got around to the Beach Boys, our passionate professor portrayed just how much was going on during the song 'Good Vibrations." With chalk on slate he made shorthand notations of what was going on and by the end of the song, during it's peak, his arm were flailing like a madman's trying to keep up with the music. And all of it was done on 4 tracks. Amazing. And the best way to hear that is on vinyl.

There are too many amazing occurrences in the music of Brian Wilson to even count, from the pouncing, energetic bass line in Look (retitled Song for Children on the 2004 SMiLE), to the climactic vocal and string conclusion of Cabin Essence (as close to heaven as you'll get on Earth), to the sheer beauty and power in his voice upon reciting the word "Domino" in Surf's Up, a song which perfectly summarizes what he had suffered through because of his genius and disconnect from the demands of society.

The best moment though, by far, I would have to say is in "Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder." Brian sings "and listen to my heart beat," which, just in the way it comes out, is already purely angelic. However, what really makes it truly amazing is the fact that it leads into an interlude that is not just symbolic of that lyric, but of Brian's work in general. The strings in this section alone are enough to move almost anybody to tears. The timpani that concludes the interlude is a perfect representation of the physical heartbeat, but the strings that precede it are the perfect example of the heart that humans think of; the heart that powers our creativity, our passion, our love. Brian is truly inviting the listener to listen to everything, every ounce of creativity in his being, just pour out of the record; maybe motivated by some personal love in the literal sense as described in the song, but probably even moreso by the profound love he has for making not just music, but something that can make an individual feel pure, blissful and euphoric at the same time, which is sadly ironic because he was such a tortured soul himself. I think the pain he felt however allowed him to connect to so much of his audience, and that's what makes Pet Sounds one of the most painfully personal records of all time, alongside the likes of Plastic Ono Band and the debut Violent Femmes album. Although Tony Asher may have written the final lyrics, Brian basically dictated to him what he wanted the song to be about, which only further proves that Pet Sounds is the perfect document of Wilson's own struggle to find love, whether literally or through appreciation of his art.

By the way I want to tell you that your blog is amazing. Many of my friends read it daily. You have amazing taste, from LaMontagne to Springsteen to Fleet Foxes to Wilson. I have yet to find a blogger with tastes so close to mine as you.

While Pet Sounds will always be one of my all time favorites (and I could go on and on about my actual favorite moments), I'll weight in with two more recent Brian Wilson faves, just because they both make me laugh:1) If you've not yet done so, check out the recent video in which Zoey Deschanel interviews Brian at the Hollywood Bowl. He calls her Joey and then after she spends several minutes gushing over him he concludes by saying the interview was nice because "you're a very pretty girl."2) Playing Vege-tables loudly in my car to tease my 8 year old son - who won't eat a one!

it's got the be the start of California Girls, doesn't it?joy, beauty, brilliance, it's all there (and that's because the 'real' song actually starts!)Brian loves his wee symphonies and this has to be the prettiest oneeverything that makes him so special right therenow that truly deserves a smile :)

I've always loved me some Beach Boys ever since I was a kid. I would have to say that Sloop John B is my favorite song of theirs at the moment. Whenever I listen to it, it seems to stick in my head for weeks. It doesn't really bother me, however. I kinda love it, in fact.

I went to see the Beach Boys on the Boston Garden back in, I think, the summer of 1984 ... Dennis Wilson had passed during the winter. I had pretty good seats, was digging the music, and felt good enough to buy one of those overpriced concert shirts, that stupid "baseball length," like 3/4 sleeves, what's up with that?

Anyway, I spotted a shirt selling for a discount, like an idiot, I jumped on it and proudly walked away with a shirt ... from the tour the year before. Dammit.

My favorite current Beach Boys/Brian Wilson moment is at the end of "I'm Waiting For The Day" on Pet Sounds where they come back in with "You didn't think!". It's a perfect cap to the song. But picking just one is so hard. Pet Sounds is my very favorite album.

Easily my favorite Brian Wilson moment was seeing him perform Smile in Madison, Wisconsin. I've never teared up at a concert before, but hearing "God Only Knows" performed live was like...well, I can't think of anything on par with seeing Brian Wilson perform "God Only Knows." And damn right I cried.The layered vocals at the end of that song are the pinnacle of pop music orchestration.

When I heard "Fell Flows" in the film "Almost Famous", I realized that there was a Beach Boys after "Good Vibrations". Silly, I know, but I'd never really delved into their catalog post-Pet Sounds, and "Wild Honey", "Heroes and Villians", "Feel Flows" and "Surf's Up" are the kind of tunes that should be as well known as "I Get Around".

"Sock it to me, Wild Honey"-easily one of the best lines in the history of rock and roll!

My favorite moment in Beach Boys music is from one of the countless "Smile Sessions" bootlegs. On my copy of the sessions the Boys do an a Capella rendition of "You Are My Sunshine". However, they convert all the pronouns to past tense (i.e. You were my sunshine, my only sunshine/You made me when skies were gray...). It's truly one of the most beautifully haunting, and at the same time mesmerizing things I have ever heard. How they could take a classic that we all know and love and turn it into a soaring dirge for lost love.

I'm a huge Beach Boys fan and have had the privilege of seeing Brian several times in concert and various rare settings (the taping of the Imagination DVD in St. Charles, IL and post I Just Wasn't Made for These Times movie screening set featuring Brian and band comprised of Paul Shaffer, the Paley Brothers, Billy West, Don Was and Richard X. Heyman). But push come to shove, maybe my favorite Beach Boys song is one that barely features a Beach Boy. "Sail On, Sailor" is brilliant from start to finish. I love the almost/is it really chorus section. "Seldom stumble, never crumbleTry to tumble, life's a rumbleFeel the stinging I've been givenNever ending, unrelentingHeartbreak searing, always fearingNever caring, perseveringSail on, sail on, sailor"

jeremy_vannatta@yahoo.comI was a big Beach Boys fan as a kid and my love of them has only grown. In the summer of 1977, I was 6 years old and saw them play my first concert at the OKC zoo ampitheater. Since it was 1977, as a 6 year old, my parents let me go to the front of the stage. They played "Good Vibrations" and I felt my chest pounding. Vibrating. I ran back to my parents convinced that this was a magical song. Still is.

Two of my favorite BB moments are on bootlegs. The first is the vocal sessions for "Been Too Long." The opening ooh's before they sing the song's title is absolutely some of the most magical harmonies they've ever recorded, and I'm glad to see a version of the song on Lucky Old Sun. The other is the a-capella tag session for the fade of "Breakaway." It's the aahhs that go over the singing of the title. I see a bright white light when I listen to that over and over.

My concert moment was when I flew from Portland Oregon to San Diego to see Brian do SMiLE. I got to the show just in time, and as I raced down the middle aisle to my seat, I was 10 ft from Brian, and paused to quickly bow down. He looked distracted so I don't know if he saw me, but I had to do it. A Vinyl lp would rule.

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"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there’s something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It’s the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part...."
-Nick Hornby, Songbook -
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